ECS Task Force Approves Interim Report

Members of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) Task Force studying state education funding today voted on an interim report to present to the governor before the start of the legislative session.

The task force members voted unanimously on six recommendations, which provide a core vision for improving education funding.

The recommendations include supporting efforts to increase funding, establish clear year-to-year funding predictability, and collecting and using the most recent and appropriate data to measure wealth, poverty, foundation, population and other formula factors.

The report identifies six main areas:

1)      ECS grants

2)      Magnet schools

3)      Choice

4)      Early childhood education

5)      Accountability and performance

6)      Special education needs

“I know that everyone has decided that what is required is more money, and I don’t know that I agree that it’s a whole lot more money, I think it’s money better spent,” said Sen. Toni Harp, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee and task force member.

Sen. Andrea Stillman, chair of the education committee and co-chair of the task force, thanked the task force members for all their hard work and input into the process. But she said, “We still have some work ahead of us in the next few months.”

The group has established a list of next steps and will meet again next month to continue their work before issuing their final report in October.

Task force meetings are scheduled for Feb. 2, Feb. 16, March 8 and April 2.

As soon as the interim report is available, we will provide a link.